


Tu me manques

by MuseofWriting



Category: Miraculous Ladybug
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Flash Forward, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-23
Updated: 2018-09-23
Packaged: 2019-07-15 18:53:49
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,778
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16069196
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MuseofWriting/pseuds/MuseofWriting
Summary: Ladybug and Chat Noir defeated Hawk Moth, unmasked Gabriel Agreste, and promptly disappeared.Ten years later, two old friends reconnect.





	Tu me manques

**Author's Note:**

> I saw [this post](https://universeenthusiast.tumblr.com/post/177210009523/im-sad-and-now-you-all-have-to-be-too) and the angst queen in me promptly went "Ah. I have been summoned."
> 
> This fic was originally posted to my tumblr [here](http://thatgirlonstage.tumblr.com/post/177602258857/i-meant-to-post-this-like-a-week-ago-but-the); due to it becoming more popular than I expected and a couple people asking if it was posted to AO3 or anywhere else I decided to publish it here as well.

“Adrien Agreste. I was beginning to think I’d never see you again.”

Adrien turned and a sudden warmth bloomed in his chest. Marinette was grinning at him, elegant and casual at once in clothes from her own line: a narrow skirt that wrapped about her hips and a loose summer blouse. Her short hair framed her face differently than his memories, making visible the open confidence he’d always admired. She closed the distance between them to greet him with a kiss, one cheek after the other brushing in quick succession.

“It’s good to see you, Marinette,” he said as she stepped back, and was surprised how much he meant it. “Shall we?” He held open the door, the scent of coffee spilling from the shop as she stepped inside. He followed, the door swinging shut behind him to muffle the sounds of the Parisian streets.

“How have you been?” she asked. He shrugged against the bland politeness of the question.

“It’s strange to be back,” he answered. There was no sense in dodging the topic. He’d spent the last month since he’d landed at Charles de Gaulle relearning the streets of Paris, wandering up the cobblestones of Montmartre and crisscrossing the Latin Quarter, trying to ignore a wistful memory of what it felt like to see those streets from the rooftops. “I can’t believe the school is gone.” Marinette pursed her lips as she fished through her purse for an extra Euro.

“They never really rebuilt it properly,” she said, shrugging. “Chloe left the same time you did, so Mayor Bourgeois’s ‘generous donations’ suddenly dried up. They cleaned up the part that Ladybug’s last charm managed to restore and just kind of crammed us all in there for our last year. But I think there were a lot of bad associations, and, well…” She stepped up to order.

“Nino told me they tore the rest of it down after our old class graduated. I just didn’t really process it until I saw it,” Adrien said from behind her. Marinette nodded silently for a moment before perking up.

“Miss Bustier’s still teaching. She got offered a job as principal by four different schools but she insisted she get to stay in the classroom. We catch up from time to time.”

“That’s great,” he said, earnest despite the twinge of guilt that pricked his conscience. “I haven’t really managed to stay in touch with everyone,” he admitted. “Right after…” He trailed off, and Marinette gave him a searching look.

“We don’t have to talk about that,” she said, “if you don’t want to.” Adrien bit the inside of his cheek as the server set their coffees on the counter. “Let’s sit?” He followed her to a table tucked in the back corner. The coffee shop was quiet: one girl sat elbows deep in textbooks and study notes, earbuds jammed firmly in her ears, and a couple chatted over espressos, but other than that, the place was empty.

“I follow your Instagram,” Adrien offered, and Marinette squeaked in response. “I loved that line of skirts you brought out last spring.”

“Thank you,” she said, bringing up one hand to cover her face in embarrassment. “I’ve been following your modeling as well – that commercial that came out this January was, um, ahem, it was—”

“God  _no_ ,” Adrien groaned, taking his turn to hide his face. “I’m never doing shirtless again, that was mortifying.” Marinette coughed desperately and took a gulp of her coffee. Their eyes met across the table, and suddenly they both dissolved into giggles, the absurdity of the situation overtaking them. “I couldn’t go on Twitter until  _May_  without seeing gifs everywhere, it was awful,” Adrien gasped.

“I saw it for the first time when I was in the office, and I had to explain to everyone  _no you don’t understand I went to SCHOOL with him this is so weird_.” Marinette shook her head. “God, do you know what kind of reaction you get in the fashion industry when you tell people you went to middle school with  _Adrien Agreste_?”

“Do you remember that hat you made for me, for that competition…?”

“The pigeon feathers!” she all but shrieked. “Of course, I think my original is still in my room somewhere – and Chloe copied my design – and that akuma M. Pigeon, he—” She shut her mouth abruptly and dropped her gaze. Adrien looked away as well, fidgeting. He plucked a sugar cube out of the bowl in the center of the table and stirred it into his coffee slowly, eyes fixed on the patterns his spoon made dragging across the surface. He could feel Marinette watching him, but didn’t look up until she suddenly burst out with, “I’m sorry.”

“What?” he asked, so startled he almost dropped the spoon into the mug.

“I– I– I, uh, I never got to say that,” she stuttered, and suddenly she was a red-faced babbler again, tongue tripping over her words. Adrien stared, nonplussed. “Sorry, I know I just said we didn’t have to talk about it, but this is the first time I’ve seen you in person since, you just kind of— you kind of vanished, and it took months for Nino to finally hear from you and pass us all your new number, and by then it seemed too late and it didn’t really seem like something to say over Skype, and, and I just— you  _know_  none of us were, we weren’t, we weren’t mad at  _you_ , or anything like that. You know that, right? I mean—”

“Marinette,” he interrupted. Impulsively, he reached across the table and grabbed her hand. She went redder and shut her mouth tight, staring at him. “I never— You don’t have to apologize.” She bit her lip. “What my father—” He cut himself off. “You have nothing to be sorry for.” She looked away.

“I…” She stopped herself. “I wish we could have at least been there for you,” she said. Adrien sighed, releasing her hand and sitting back. She pulled her hands into her lap and folded them, staring down.

“Nathalie was… very intent on salvaging the Agreste business,” he explained. “Moving out of Paris, that was all her idea. I didn’t really get a choice.” Marinette’s expression softened.

“Chloe told us,” she said. A smile pulled at the corner of her mouth when she heard Adrien’s sputter. “Yeah,  _Chloe_. She didn’t exactly phrase it nicely, but… I think she knew you’d want us to know. We were all really worried about you.” Adrien’s fingers curled to press his nails into his palm. Suddenly he regretted letting go of her hand.

“I know,” he said.

He’d saved a newspaper clipping, because it seemed like the thing to do. It sat in the bottom of a drawer in his desk, a triumphant photograph of Ladybug holding up the butterfly miraculous, followed by a mug shot, the headline blaring HAWK MOTH CAPTURED: Shocking Reveal! Famous Designer Gabriel Agreste Is Unmasked as the Supervillain of Paris. Chat Noir was paired off with Ladybug in the article: “Ladybug and Chat Noir brought down the infamous villain… Ladybug and Chat Noir fought a battle that destroyed half a city block… Ladybug and Chat Noir handed M. Agreste over to the Paris police force…” but she had done all the talking, taken all the pictures, faced the press solo. Adrien was mentioned twice: once in reference to the school, which had been the focus of so many akuma attacks and was ultimately the site of their last showdown, and once at the end of the article, mentioning that he and the Agreste company had declined to comment.

“You went back to homeschooling for your final year, right?” He pulled himself back to the present and looked across the table. Marinette was sipping her coffee, watching him carefully. He nodded.

“Honestly, it was probably a smart decision.” He smiled ruefully. “Getting mugged by reporters is nothing new, but for a few months, it was  _bad_. Really, really bad. I went a whole month without leaving the house.”

“But then, Toronto…?” Adrien smirked.

“Toronto was all my idea,” he said. “Nathalie didn’t even know I’d applied. She had plans, but…” He took a sip from his coffee. “I was tired of other people controlling my life. Nathalie was furious, but I was eighteen, the money was officially and legally mine, and there wasn’t anything she could do about it.” He paused, running his thumb over the handle of the mug. “And la Gorille stood up for me, which was a surprise.”

“I don’t think I ever even heard him speak,” Marinette said, raising her eyebrows.

“He probably said more that afternoon than I normally heard him say in a year,” Adrien agreed. “I had to talk him down from following me to class every day, though. Having a bodyguard would kind of defeat the idea of flying under the radar.” She chuckled.

“I can imagine. Juleka was there as well, wasn’t she?”

“Yeah, she was a CS major with a Gender Studies minor, so we didn’t cross paths a lot,” he said. “But we got lunch from time to time. It was nice to see a familiar face.” Marinette flashed a perfunctory smile, and then bit her lip in hesitation.

“So…  _did_  people… recognize you, there?” Adrien shook his head.

“I got a lot of ‘you look familiar.’ But I actually— did you know I dyed my hair?”

“You  _what_? When? What color? Why have I never seen pictures?” Adrien laughed.

“Père would have murdered me,” he said, almost fondly. “And, black. It was mostly to try and avoid people recognizing me, although I kind of liked it after a while? It was… different. I stopped after graduation, though, so… there probably aren’t  _that_ many pictures. I was a little camera shy for a few years there. But I’m sure I can dig one up for you.”

“You better,” Marinette waved a finger at him accusatorially. “But— no one recognized your name?”

“I enrolled as Adrien Desjardins, so…” He caught her blank look. “My mother’s maiden name,” he explained. “It was pretty rare anyone managed to put it together, and I always asked them not to tell anyone if they asked me about it. I had kind of a shockingly normal university experience, considering.” He’d stayed in Toronto after graduation, still more or less flying under the radar even as his blond hair crept back in and he started signing himself as Agreste once again. He spent a year freelancing his way through a few different jobs, until he picked up the shattered remains of his modeling career and found out there was still demand for him. Then he used it as excuse to travel, signing up for any shoots in places he had never been before, lounging in expensive clothes on beaches and in front of monuments and forests and fountains, spending all his spare time trying to escape the bubble of luxury hotels to visit those places for real. He lost track of how many flights he’d taken, how many cities he’d toured, until it had suddenly been ten years since he last saw Paris, and he thought of his Lady only occasionally instead of every day, and no longer knew if he was ashamed or relieved by that.

“That’s good,” Marinette murmured. “That’s… I’m glad.”

“You and Juleka’s brother, you had a thing, didn’t you?” Marinette went the color of a tomato.

“It was super casual!” she yelped. “We were never really— we went on a few dates, that’s all, it was never really official!” Adrien snorted.

“How long did that last? Juleka never seemed to know exactly what was going on between the two of you.” Marinette squirmed.

“It was kind of on and off…” she muttered. She looked up and her eyes flashed defiantly. “But it was just for a year or so, and like I said, we were on and off. It was more whenever we ran into each other. We were never really  _together_  together.” She narrowed her eyes at him. “How about  _you_?” she asked. “Anyone special in Canada? Or on any of your world tour photoshoots?” Adrien’s stomach lurched and he schooled his expression to stillness as he shook his head.

“No. No one.”

Unbidden, the memory came into his head. The flashing lights, the sound of helicopters, a hand on his arm and a whispered request. Meet her tonight, just after sundown, on the rooftops near the Opéra. He’d nodded silent assent just before he jumped away, but he had lied. The news cameras closing in, the sight of Gabriel in handcuffs, the poor tortured Nooroo explaining in grim and precise terms everything that Hawk Moth had done – all of it had proved too much. He couldn’t face her, not immediately, not that night.

He’d thought he would have  _time_ , he thought he would have a chance to explain, to process his anger and his grief and then stand up and face the world. Instead, he had robbed himself of his only chance to say goodbye.

After that, no one. He made a few attempts over the years – he had never lacked for offers – but sooner or later, he would be looking at them, and their faces would all morph into hers. He realized he wasn’t interested in finding someone, in general, but only someone in specific. As much as he tried not to, he always found himself looking for  _her_.

“Adrien?”

“Hmm? Sorry, I zoned out for a moment,” he said, looking back up at Marinette, her blue eyes piercing. She frowned and he offered a smile, bland and untroubled. “What did you say?” he asked.

“I asked if you…” she hesitated, and then shook her head. “No, never mind.” The last minute of conversation trickled back into his brain and he sat up straight.

“You asked if I went back to— my old house,” he said. Marinette shook her head.

“Sorry, that was invasive, I just meant— I didn’t know where you were staying, I know you said you were going to be here for a few months, but—”

“No, it’s fine,” he said. “I got an apartment. I’m never living there again. Actually, I’ve been trying to—” He scratched at the back of his neck, suddenly self-conscious. “I’ve been trying to get it converted into a, well, sort of a Miraculous Museum? Nothing too extensive, but, I figure no one would want to buy it anyway with… with the… basement,” he swallowed rapidly, “and it’s sort of the perfect spot for it, so…” Marinette had gone pink.

“I don’t know if that’s really necessary…” she mumbled.

“You don’t think?” he asked, crestfallen. He’d had a lot of internal wrestling with whether the idea was self-aggrandizing, and a long, difficult conversation with himself about what it would mean for ever revealing himself as Chat Noir. He’d tried again, one last, desperate time, to find Fu, and ask him whether it would contravene the conditions of the Miraculous, since their history was largely lost and secret. However, no one in Paris had forgotten about Ladybug, Chat Noir, Hawk Moth, or any of the others. The memories were not magically fading from people’s minds. The Ladyblog, while inactive, had been archived, and still every now and again the message boards got a random spurt of activity. If those who did not learn from history were doomed to repeat it, Adrien had decided he owed it to the world to try and preserve what he could. Perhaps, if the Miraculous returned one day, the next Ladybug and Chat Noir could learn from their mistakes and their victories. “I know it may seem odd coming from… me, but I thought—”

“No! I, I just, no I think it’s a great idea!” Marinette shouted. The couple glanced briefly over at them and she blushed with embarrassment, lowering her voice. “I meant, I meant, uh, I just meant you didn’t have to turn your  _house_ …  _you_  don’t have to do that, you don’t have some kind of obligation to—”

“But I want to,” Adrien said, almost laughing, suddenly giddy with relief. “It’s… It’s important to me. It’s…”

It was catharsis, as much as it was anything else. It was his way of letting go.

There had been no warning. Fu hadn’t told them, or perhaps he hadn’t known. Plagg had said nothing, and Adrien would never get to ask him why. Ladybug hadn’t known either, he was certain, unless she found out at the last minute, because they’d talked about  _after_ , they’d talked in the quiet moments of an early morning patrol about being heroes and growing older, about choosing sidekicks and successors. They’d talked about dreams of a future together, side by side and back to back.

And then, the morning after Hawk Moth’s arrest, Adrien had woken up with a crick in his neck in a hotel room, and found Plagg uncharacteristically quiet, nibbling at a piece of Camembert. He’d been preparing himself for the press, preparing himself to be Chat without being Adrien, preparing to face the grief of what his father had done. He’d sat up, mentioning that la Gorille would probably be coming by to check on him soon. Plagg had swallowed the rest of the Camembert in one gulp, floated up to his face, and stared at him for a moment. Adrien tried, half-joking, to ask what the matter was. All Plagg had said was, “Ça va aller, Adrien.” Then, with no other warning, no time to prepare, Plagg and the ring had simply evaporated, a stream of twinkling lights drifting into the air as Adrien shouted in shock and despair. He’d clutched at the air, at his finger, screamed Plagg’s name, demanded to be transformed a dozen times over. None of it had worked. His kwami and the miraculous were simply gone.

He’d destroyed the room. He was lucky the hotel staff and everyone else put it down to grief and anger over what Gabriel had done. He’d thrown pillows, torn at the sheets, picked up a chair and hurled it at the wall. The chair shattering into splinters, a few of which flew back and embedded themselves into his arm, snapped something inside him and made the rage drain out as fast as it had come. He dropped to the floor and, for the first time in years, he lost every last bit of his composure and sobbed until his throat was raw. Nathalie and la Gorille found him there. Nathalie quietly and efficiently packaged him away, deleted all of his social media presence and took away his phone, removing him totally and completely from the public world for months, until she deemed he’d regained his self-control. He’d managed to sneak out exactly once, clumsy and out of practice doing it without Chat’s powers, and run like hell for Fu’s shop. The old man was not there, and the shop was shuttered and closed as if it had never been. A month later, after Gabriel’s trial concluded, Adrien found himself on a train south, without parents, without friends, without superpowers, without Plagg, and without any way to find his Lady.

For almost two years he held onto some desperate, foolish hope that she at least still had her Miraculous. Then, then at least he could have a prayer of finding her. But as time wore on, it seemed less and less likely, and when a terrorist attack passed without her materializing, he gave up. She’d lost her miraculous the same way he had, and the last thing he’d ever done was run away.

He still tried, of course. He read through every theory on her identity on the Ladyblog, but none of them went anywhere. He toyed with the idea of revealing his own identity, publicly, but he was afraid of the questions it would raise. He didn’t dare poke any holes into the testimony against Gabriel. Plus, he no longer had the ring or the ability to back up his claim. If anything, he would probably be committed for insanity. He’d gone online, planning to make an anonymous post, reaching out for her, and found dozens upon dozens of ghost accounts claiming to be the real Chat Noir or the real Ladybug. And so the desperate, hopeless truth sunk in: without the mask, she was lost to him.

He’d kept the secret buried. Occasionally it bubbled up inside him, in moments of loneliness or loss. Sometimes he fought back a desperate urge to scream it out, to tell someone,  _anyone_  at all. Sometimes, in the middle of a photoshoot, a black cat would wander by, and suddenly he was fourteen again, choking on rules and only dreaming of the kind of freedom a mask could bring. Sometimes he was sitting on a plane looking over shoot schedules, and a curious sense of surrealism would blanket him until he would wonder if he somehow dreamed the whole thing. Perhaps it was a complicated fantasy to cope with his father’s neglect, and nothing more. Then again, there came the nights when it seemed like her last touch, that grip on his upper arm, was the last thing that had ever been real, and everything since then had been staticky filler.

He looked up and saw Marinette watching him, her eyes soft, an understanding smile on her face, and his chest flooded with warmth again. Her fingers idly traced a knot in the wood of the table. “It’s the anniversary today, you know,” she said quietly. “Stoneheart.”

“I know,” he said. In fact, when Marinette’s text had popped up asking him to meet her for coffee on this  _particular_  day, he’d written and almost sent an entire reply asking for a different day, literally any other day, because he didn’t know if he could handle that much of a trip down memory lane all at once. But then, he reasoned, this was usually the worst day out of the year. Likely, it would do him good to have some social interaction with someone who wasn’t expecting much, an old friend who just wanted to catch up over coffee.

The secret bubbled inside him, untold and painful.

“It almost doesn’t seem real, does it?” Marinette asked. She stared across the coffee shop and out the window, her expression surprisingly wistful. “Ladybug and Chat Noir. Like, there were  _four years_  when there were just  _superheroes_  flying around the city.”

“Do you miss it?” he asked, and cringed inwardly. It had been a time of chaos, when having a crappy day could turn you abruptly and terribly into a monster. By all rights, even he shouldn’t miss it. Marinette looked surprised, and then pursed her lips in thought.

“I do,” she said carefully. “It was— well— didn’t it just seem like a time of  _possibility_? Superheroes were real. Who  _knew_  what could happen?”

“Like getting transformed into a giant stone monster?” he asked wryly. Marinette’s mouth twisted.

“So it wasn’t all good,” she said. “But, still…” She trailed off, leaving them in quiet for a moment. Adrien toyed with his mug, spinning it around on its saucer. His chest ached with the desire to just  _talk_  about it, just to be able to share the memories with someone. It didn’t feel right, reminiscing about it like this. He just wanted someone, anyone else to know.

And really, why not Marinette?

The thought brought him up short, and he glanced across the table where Marinette was swallowing the last of her coffee, eyes staring past him through the window to the street. She’d supported him probably more than she realized. He’d been proud of himself for  _earning_  her friendship. In retrospect, he was hilariously thankful that she had mistaken him for taking part in Chloe’s prank with the gum.

More than that, though, she’d been a not insignificant part of holding the class together throughout akuma attacks and crisis. She’d been there – not for all of it, but for a lot of it. She had a determined fire in her that it had taken him a while to see, but once he did, it seemed obvious. He admired her almost as much as he admired his Lady. They’d even had some fumbling beginnings of a romance, a long and slow time in building, full of false starts, hindered by Adrien’s feelings for his Lady, advanced to a single, rapid, stolen kiss under a pink-streaked sunset by his understanding that Ladybug would likely never return his feelings. But any chance he and Marinette might have had, had been brutally cut off by Hawk Moth’s last attack and Adrien’s subsequent isolation. After they finally got back in touch, they’d both been stiff and distant. Awkward. Unsure where they stood with each other. It took almost a year before their friendship grew comfortable again, eventually composed of erratic texts and occasional late-night Skype calls. They rarely talked about anything too personal – video games, music, and fashion were safe and easy topics with plenty of ground to cover. But now, face to face again, reminiscing old times, he suddenly couldn’t imagine a better person to tell. She’d listen, she’d keep his secret, and somehow, inexplicably, he felt like she’d understand.

He traced the edge of his saucer with his finger, keeping his eyes down, slightly afraid to watch her reaction, not quite believing what he was about to say. “You know, Marinette, I… I was Chat Noir. I never told anyone. The Miraculous, it… it just evaporated, the morning after we took down Hawk Moth.” He smiled sadly. “I never got to find out who Ladybug was, and by now I’m pretty sure I’ll never know. I miss her every day.” A silence stretched, long and painful, until Adrien looked up. Marinette was frozen, eyes wide, and as he looked up at her, she suddenly dropped her mug. It clattered back into the saucer. “Uh…” He tried for a joke. “Princess?”

Abruptly, Marinette burst into tears.

Adrien pushed halfway to his feet in alarm, heart pounding. The couple and even the girl studying were sneaking sideways glances at him. He reached out to touch her shoulder but paused, terrified to make it worse. “Marinette, what— what did I say— are you—?”

“You—  _you_ —” She swiped angrily at her tears and looked up at him, eyes wide and blue and shining. “ _Chaton_?” she asked. Adrien felt his heart stop. He dropped back into his chair with a thud, suddenly feeling limp, all the breath gone from his body. He’d been tossed halfway across Paris without feeling so winded. For a moment, the two of them stared at each other, tears still overflowing onto Marinette’s cheeks.

“M—” Adrien’s throat closed around the words, and suddenly he realized his eyes were burning too. He fought for breath. “Milady, is that you?”

Marinette sniffed, loud and ugly and real, and nodded. “It’s me,” she said. “I’m here, Chaton.”

Adrien didn’t really notice standing back up out of his chair, only that he was now on his feet. She met him halfway, arms wrapping around him so tight they squeezed out any last breath in him. She buried her head into his shoulder and sobbed, as he lost the battle against tears of his own.

“So long—  _so long_ —”

“I’m sorry,” Adrien gasped. “I’m so sorry, I ran away, I should have come to meet you, I should have told you, I’m so so sorry.” She pulled back and placed a finger against his lips.

“Stop,” she ordered. “No apologizing.” She leaned forward and buried her head against his chest. “You don’t know how much I’ve missed you,” she whispered.

“I never— I  _never_ —” Adrien took a shuddering breath. “It’s been like living with a hole in my heart,” he said. She wrapped her arms around him again.

“Please stay,” she whispered. “I— Please stay.”

“Of course I will,” Adrien said. He wanted to  _laugh_ , he wanted to burst out in hysterics, because that was the easiest thing in the world she could have asked him to do. He wouldn’t leave this  _hug_  if the couple at the other table weren’t beginning to openly stare. “Milady— Princess— let’s go— let’s go somewhere we can talk.” She stepped back, and her eyes shone as she smiled at him, and suddenly he wondered how he could have failed to see his Lady in those bright blue eyes all this time. She reached down and caught his hand, lacing their fingers together.

“Come back to my place,” she said. “I have… a lot of things I want to say.” He squeezed her hand.

“So do I.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I thrive on comments, if you enjoyed the fic please leave one!


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